Monty Panesar’s “Consultant” role lasted only 2 days with Australian team

Monty Panesar, the former English spinner, largely credited for England's memorable series win in India in the year 2012-13, was roped in with much fanfare by Cricket Australia (CA) last month to "tackle" Indian spin twins, Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja and also to "train" Australian players Matt Renshaw (who occasionally bowls off-spin) and Steve O'Keefe to "perform" well on Indian pitches.

Opener Renshaw may have been "trained" to tackle Kohli's spinners.

However, it has emerged that Monty Panesar "trained" the two Australians only for two days, and that too not on the spinner-friendly Indian pitches, but only in their adopted home country as they were born in England and Malaysia respectively.

Panesar also didn't travel to Dubai, where the Australian team practiced at the ICC's academy to get acclimatized to the Indian pitches.

Revealing exclusively over the call, Kate Hutchison, the media manager, said, "He (Panesar) worked with two of our players, namely Matt Renshaw and Steve O'Keefe, for two days in Australia. He was never planned to come to Dubai and India. He is not part of our touring party".

It may be noted here that the services of former Indian player, Sridharan Sriram, who has played 8 ODIs' were utilized by CA as Sridharan had also travelled to Dubai and has also accompanied the Australian team when they landed in Mumbai on Monday.

Sridharan is presently working on the Indian tour only as he is committed to mentoring the Delhi Daredevils team in the upcoming IPL season.